Happenings

One of the things I love about being a stay at home mom is the time to learn and do things with my hands. I'm not saying if you work you can't, but for me if I worked I wouldn't and would be stuck in a rut. Those who can do it all I admire.

Over the years I have jumped into many messes, learning, teaching myself to do things, and my family has eatin some pretty interesting things, or put up with all my experiements, ideas, or choices.

One thing is household repairs, my husband works all day and has a full time calling at church so calling him to come home and fix something that is easy would only add more to his plate. Yesterday, the plumbing under the kitchen sink leaked and needed to be replaced so off to town I went. Ashley watched as I took off the old piping and put the new on and hubby didn't have to look for the part or come home and fix it.

Another thing is bread and below is a fruit of that labor that Wyatt and I put together yesterday for sandwich rolls. He asked for white bread so I made a batch for him with white flour and the other with sprouted wheat and sprouted poppy seeds. All things I have learned on my own and now bless my family with.

Mondays I make cheese, we buy from a dairy not far from our home. We usually buy 4 gallons of whole milk that I place in gallon glass jars, we skim the cream when it rises to make butter and sour cream. then 2 gallons is turned into cheese. This week I decided to make Pepperjack cheese with some home canned jalopeno peppers. We usually have 3 small wheels of cheese aging in the fridge, they age for a month before we open them then this lasts us 2 to 3 weeks. We don't buy any dairy products from the store or eggs since our ducks produce quite well. Over the last year I have gotten pretty good at making cheese that I want to branch out to other cheeses that need to age long like swiss or romano.

Now this is something weird and your wondering why there is a picture of a bunch of beer bottles here, since we are teetottlers here. No, we didn't drink them.

Ashley is getting to newborn goats to bottle feed so we took a trip to a feed store that is a little distance down some winding country roads to get formula etc. On the way home she spotted a cobalt blue bottle so we turned around and picked it up as well as this pile of bottles. It looked like someone had a party right there on the side of the road, after we picked them all up it looked better.

But we did have a reason for wanting bottles. A bottle border for two flowerbeds we are putting in.

Yes the kiddos were horrified I was picking up beer bottles, but I said we are cleaning up the side of the road and finding a use for them besides them being litter. so now we are on the hunt for bottles when we drive around when they are in the ground no one knows what kind they are. We got this idea from Little Homestead in the City.

Spring! Barefeet in cool dirt while the sun shines down on you.

We planted a little over half of the 30 pounds of potates we have to plant yesterday. We still have more to go, but it is lovely to be outside playing in the dirt!

Well off we go to a 1800's village for a field trip and some gem mining with our 4H group. Home all have a blessed day.

Love,

Erika